Hans Ulrich Obrist: One last question: What is your advice to a young artist? Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a slim volume, Rat an einen jungen Poeten (Advice to a Young Poet). What would be your advice to a young artist in 2012?
Marianne Eigenheer: To see as much as possible; to go out as much as possible and to see yourself as part of a whole. Perhaps to look up at the stars: I am a tiny part of the Milky Way, but at the same time I am myself and that is already something. Just to learn to see yourself as part of society, I think that would be important for 2012. Of course I notice this in London, where I am working at the moment. Many young artists think it is enough to look at their own work and that is it. But I think today it also reaches much, much further even for young artists. To stay open and see what is going on with other artists, with people of other cultures, but also in your own environment – that would be my most important advice at the moment.
From the interview in Lack 3, sic! Raum für Kunst, Lucerne, 2012
Marianne Eigenheer lives in Basel and London and works as an artist, curator and academic.
Her academic and artistic work includes interdisciplinary projects
with scientists, anthropologists and designers and she is particularly
interested in the ‘glocal’ issues – cross-cultural research and new
media.
Eigenheer earned her BA at Lehrerinnenseminar Aarau and her MA in Art Education at the College of Fine Art, Lucerne, today HGKL. She worked as a Scientific Assistant at the Museum of Art Lucerne (1971–88) and studied History of Art, Anthropology and Psychology at the University of Zurich (1973–76). Eigenheer was awarded with two art grants from the Swiss Government in 1980/81 and was an Artist in Residence in London through the Landis & Gyr Foundation in Zug, Switzerland 2001/2002. She was a Visiting Artist at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich, and at the Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo, in 1987. She then worked as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Tokyo (1988) and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (1988), and as a Lecturer at the Schule für Gestaltung Bern (1990–92). From 1991 to 1999, Eigenheer was Artistic Director of IAAB/CMS in Basel. In addition to many lectures, workshops and artist visits around the world, she lectured at the Institute of Educational Art Theory, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main (1994–96); was Professor at the Offenbach Academy of Art and Design (1995–96) and Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design (1997–2007) and was Guest Professor at Curtin University of Technology in Perth (1998–99).
Since 2003 Eigenheer has been a Professor and the Director at the Institute for Curatorship and Education (ICE), Edinburgh College of Art, and an Honorary Professor since 2009. She has participated in ICE workshops, lecture and conferences – including many in the USA, Serbia, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Georgia, Australia and the UK – specialising on the relationship between the curator, artist and public in different cultural contexts. From 2005 to 2007 she was a partner for Ausstellungsdisplays – Innovative Entwürfe für das Ausstellen von Kunst, Medien und Design in kulturellen und kommerziellen Anwendungen with the International School Zurich beside many other curatorial projects.
Marianne Eigenheer’s artistic work has been exhibited nationally and internationally since the 1970s. (For more information, see www.sikart.ch, www.ifa.de, Künstler, Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, Munich). Recent exhibitions include one-person shows at Galerie Hafemann, Wiesbaden; Sleeper, Edinburgh; Galerie Das Ding, Lucerne; Ausstellungsraum SIC!, Lucerne; Galerie Thore Krietemeyer, Berlin; and Das Esszimmer, Bonn. Eigenheer has also recently exhibited at group shows Neue Heimat – Zwischen den Welten, Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen; Faces, The Forgotten Bar, Berlin; Friday Night, Infernoesque, Berlin; The Forgotten Bar, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Ausser Haus, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg; Keck-Kiosk, Basel; Underworld, Galerie Utopia, Zurich; Responsolidarity, ReMap3, Athens; Galerie Schindler, Zeichnungen, Goldiwil/Thun, U7, Künstlerinitiativen, Karlsruhe; Museo Nacional de Etnografia y Folklore (MUSEF), La Paz; Centro Cutural Santa Cruz; and Fundación Simón I. Patiño, Cochabamba. Eigenheer’s most recent catalogue is the 2012 Lack 3 from sic! Raum für Kunst in Lucerne (interview: Hans Ulrich Obrist with Marianne Eigenheer).
Recent publications include contributions to Patrick Geddes’ By Leaves We Live (2005); Bild und Eigensinn, Bielefeld (2006); The ETC.artist, Kunstforum 186, Cologne (2006); Rendering Visible – New Practices For Old Institutions, Between Indigenous Australia and Europe, John Mawurndjul, Art Histories in Context, Reimer/Aboriginal Studies Press (2009); and Von der Kunst, sich in Netzen nicht nur zu verfangen, Netzwerken und Kunstwerken, Bern (2010). She is also the Editor of the ICE Reader 1: Curating Critique (2008).